Paul Simon (1892 - 1979)

Paul Simon is the eldest son of the painter Lucien Simon. It is thus in an artistic atmosphere that the young Paul grows up. His father, Lucien Simon, taught him the rudiments of drawing and painting. His mother taught him watercolour. Finally, his uncle André Dauchez, a painter-engraver-photographer and brother of his mother, taught him engraving techniques. He also received advice from the family's artist friends: Cottet, Jacques-Émile Blanche, Ménard, Rodin. Sometimes he even became a partner of the latter, like George Desvallières for a commission. Others became his models, such as Aman-Jean, of whom he made a superb bust in 1933.
Paul Simon began by taking architecture courses at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris in the studio of Pierre-Émile Leprince-Ringuet, who redirected him towards sculpture and then had him work on some of his sites. He trained in drawing and painting at the Arts Décoratifs, but above all in sculpture at the Grande Chaumière under the direction of Antoine Bourdelle, a studio he entered in 1913. Bourdelle became his master. Paul Simon then devoted himself mainly to sculpture.